He's nuts. I've been part of various communities for over a decade. And my first was the Literary Forum. That's where I left off, didn't I?
We had the Keepers of the Flame. Ladies who were writing romances and their mission in life was to keep the flame of romance alive and safe. Of course, there were also gentlemen in the Forum who called themselves the Knaughty Knights. They guzzled beer by the gallon and stole firetrucks to use for panty raids at the Keep. Sir Elton Garelock and Bobby Lee Whitmire who trained their hefty steeds for the 1994 Olympic events and there was nothing like the report of Thunderbutt careering down the slope in the Long Jump.
And, yes, Lady Diana Gabaldon (of NYT bestseller fame) was one of the ringleaders. She fanned the flames and kept the fire alive while piecing together her first manuscript before all of us. We had a community that survived until AOL bought Compuserv and basically destroyed the magic of the forums.
Course, in the midst of all this, I met a woman online. Her name was Silke Juppenlatz. She lived in England and I lived in New England. Similiar, right? Close enough? How about close enough to start an electronic publishing company called Dreams Unlimited. We worked out the details, she designed the site and I became the senior editor.
As I was telling a wonderful friend, Parke Godwin, the other day, I tried my hand at writing. Hmm... let's just say I discovered quickly that I was a much better editor than I ever was a writer. So I gathered manuscripts from hopeful writers and we started to sell books. Our doors opened in Feb 1998 and Silke and I actually met for the first time 7 months later. Yup, went into business and never met.
Gotta love the Internet. You know what gave me the idea? Because Stephen King and Peter Straub wrote their first book together via the Internet. They sent chapters by email attachment to each other and, from what I understand, never met until after the book was published. Alex, the owner of the LitForum, told me that Stephen King used to lurk in the forum from time to time. Though Alex would never tell me what name King hid behind, I think I know. I think we spoke on several occasions when he'd be in-between deadlines and he'd hang out. If he ever trips over this blog (yeah, like he has nothing better to do
Anyway, that took another 3 years of my life. I finally closed the doors to Dreams Unlimited in 2001. And not because we weren't successful. We were. We were making money and our authors were making money. (A couple made some pretty d@mned good money
Next chapter: The Rise and Fall of Dreams Unlimited and the excitement and fun we had on that strange little sideroad
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